Six-and-thirty

[nq:1].. have been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moonspast. What does 'six-and-thirty' mean?[/nq]
36

Thank you! Never knew that.

[nq:1].. have been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons past. What does 'six-and-thirty' mean?[/nq]
Thirty six. Apparently numbers really went that way around in Old English (they still do in German, at least to some extent), so your source is either old or being deliberately archaic.

Compare the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence":

Sing a song of sixp

[nq:1].. have been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons past. What does 'six-and-thirty' mean?[/nq]
I found it in older contexts where it meant 36 years old ... Not sure about the "moons" though ...
Marius Hancu

[nq:2].. have been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons past. What does 'six-and-thirty' mean?[/nq]
[nq:1]I found it in older contexts where it meant 36 years old ... Not sure about the "moons" though ...[/nq]
Probably "months". "36 moons past" would be "three years ago".

Don
Kansas City

[nq:1].. have been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons past. What does 'six-and-thirty' mean?[/nq]
36.

Roughly 2 years and 9 months.

Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - se

"Ryan" asks about:
[nq:2].. have been engaged in a most obstinate war for six-and-thirty moons past.[/nq]
Steve Hayes explains:
[nq:1]36. Roughly 2 years and 9 months.[/nq]
That would require "moons" to mean sidereal months, which is extremely unlikely. It could possibly mean lunar (synodic) months, making the time period 2 years and about 11 months as we know them in our solar cal